


Night's Cope

by jeathcliff (hlwim)



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Biting, F/M, Hate Sex, Hurt/Comfort, Oral Sex, Rough Sex, Sharing a Bed, Size Kink, Smut, Woman on Top
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-20 17:28:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18997222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hlwim/pseuds/jeathcliff
Summary: Like everything else, survival is a choice. She can, so she will.





	Night's Cope

Riza is tempted, for only half a moment, to leave him to die at the river’s edge. It would be fitting, and more than well-deserved: his recklessness in blowing the bridge had sent both of them plunging into the icy depths of the river more than fifty feet below. The impact has marked her with bruises and scrapes, although Kimblee appears utterly unblemished. The current had been their savior—too swift for ice to linger yet slow enough to nudge them both ashore after a few hundred meters.

If her primary gun hadn’t slipped somewhere beneath the silt, she might have tried to kill him. Kneeling in the pebbles, coughing his lungs clear, Kimblee is more perfectly vulnerable than he will ever be again.

And—her hand ghosts a grip over the empty holster—going alone might increase her odds of survival. Raised in bitter cold, in forests as barren as any desert. Kimblee doesn’t strike as one accustomed to a rough life, and certainly his impulsiveness will prove a immediate and taxing detriment.

But an unquiet voice of reason, residing somewhere above the notch where her skull meets her spine, lists off a long series of reasons why _not_ —names for the most part, but interspersed with locations, dates, stratagems. Bradley, as always, could be perfectly understood without explicit perspicuity: protection for Kimblee and any necessary assistance in apprehending the Ishvalan fugitive. An order given, and an order carefully followed.

“Are you alright?” she asks, stumbling back down the incline towards Kimblee. He rises before she can offer a hand, staggering as he wrings the water from his hair.

“I lost my hat,” he replies, frowning. Levity, to hid the shiver in his voice.

Wind cuts across the shoreline from the far side of the river, picking up enough of the rushing water’s chill to drop the temperature several degrees. Standing still, they have maybe fifteen minutes before frostbite sets in.

“We need to find shelter.”

He looks her up and down.

“I don’t suppose you’re hiding a cold-weather tent in the considerable depths of that jacket?”

Of course his vulgarity should survive the fall as well. Riza clenches her fists, wishing a crack of lightning would roast him alive.

“I saw traps along the river. Whoever set them will have a base nearby.”

She points, and he turns.

“Hear that above the trees? Carrion birds. Probably picking carcasses from the last hunt. The traps were empty, so freshly-set. Most trappers will leave the offal spread near their camp, for protection. Smell drives away the scavengers, keeps from ruining the pelts.”

On another man, the expression might be amusement—but on Kimblee, it looks like just another shade of hunger.

“You seem awfully versed in the subject, Miss Sniper.”

She will _not_ kill him.

“We need to get moving.”

The slap of wind keeps him from attempting further small talk—a minor mercy. They climb the bank’s sharp incline and enter a pine forest blanketed in knee-high drifts of snow. Their water-soaked clothes frost over almost immediately. She leads, watching for branch breaks and the hollows that will hint at hunters’ trails, with every exhale seeming to surrender another degree of body heat. Pain radiates through her fingertips and toes, and she welcomes it, knowing that the numbness shortly to follow will signal a quick end to their staggered scramble.

She glances back at Kimblee: exposed hands and face bright red, hair swinging like an icicle over his shoulder. He’s having a harder time of it, in civilian shoes, but he deserves to suffer, as far as she’s concerned. Beyond his idiocy in blowing the bridge, his entire approach to the hunt has been erratic, haphazard, and dangerous. Not exactly a deviation from what she knew of him in the war—and perhaps that’s the worst of it. Letting herself get _familiar_ , in any way, with a man like Kimblee.

She might blush, were any blood available for the effort, remembering now her childish crush on him in Ishval. Scared off at first by his criticism, she’d been young enough then to assume him worthy of a second chance at a first impression. She had even thought, idly, how he was handsome—that silky hair always pulled back so neat, the delicate cut of his profile, ice-pricked blue eyes, even the contours of muscle beneath his thin shirt. She knew he was older and had heard that he was dangerous, but for that stretch of weeks in camp with his unit, she had been friendly, fooled into indulging his apology for harshness of word—with the benefit of time, she might have deduced his insincerity. She’d even liked his pretentiousness, a little. A teenager—lustful and confused, she was unfortunately unsubtle about the attraction.

Riza glances back again—and away before he can notice. Seeing him so suddenly in Bradley’s office, she’d felt the jolt of overwhelming memory: the coolness of his hand seizing her wrist, sliding her fingers tantalizingly upward, and the way he would not look at her, focused on stirring the rations around his tray. The wool of his trousers scratched her palm, back and forth, and the first fluttering stir of firmity when the squad sergeant approached and interrupted, when she snapped her hand back to her own thigh and refocused on the drudgery of the meal.

If he had any similarly vivid recollections of their last encounter, he’d kept it quiet in front of Bradley. Perhaps a wolfish leer or two on the train ride north, but nothing of which she could credibly accuse him.

“If I die of exposure, I’m going to be very upset with you.”

He’s aiming for a casual threat, but the trembling of his tone ruins it.

“This trail—”

“ _What_ trail?”

She sighs deeply, flashing once more through a fantasy of sliding a bullet between his eyes. Her primary weapon might be lost, but her revolver is still pressed into the small of her back. But with any luck, ice will have ruined the barrel and protect her from whim.

“Look at your feet,” she says. “These furrows weren’t made by deer. Shelter’s nearby.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“Then we freeze to death.”

He bites his lip, splitting the skin. No blood wells to the surface.

“How romantic,” he manages in a cough. “By all means, lead on.”

She could shove him into a hollow. Watch his scalp crack on a jutting rock and then his blood soaking the snow his favorite color. Revenge, for the bridge, for ripping her away from Central, for the smirk he’s maintained even as his teeth begin to chatter.

But too much is riding on their mutual survival. She pushes forward, as the screaming in her legs dissolves to a worrying lack of feeling. They’ve been marching nearly fifteen minutes, sun gone, and frostbite is just setting in when she sees it.

The cabin appears slowly out of the fog: hunched, mortared, roofed, and gratifyingly sturdy. Larger and more luxurious than any shelter she’d ever constructed on a hunt, and surrounded by snow-veiled lumps of tanning frames and hanging hooks. A crude riverstone chimney rises up from the backside, and there’s a stack of split logs beside the door. Were the tears not certain to freeze instantly, Riza might cry of joy.

“That’s our savior?” Kimblee stammers. The tips of his ears have shifted from red to white. “It doesn’t look up to the task.”

“Stay out here and freeze, then,” Riza snaps, rushing the last few feet to the door. She is terrified of a lock, but the latch lifts easily and the dark insides seem almost to glow. Struggling to bend her fingers, she quickly shovels as much of the wood pile inside as she can manage, rolling the logs with little care for the destination. Kimblee assists, somewhat, kicking the last sticks over the threshold before fixing the latch tight behind them.

Except for the absence of wind, the cabin is no improvement on being outside.

“Fire,” Riza forces out, on hands and knees shoving the logs towards the vague shape of a hearth across the floor.

For a moment they are shoulder-to-shoulder, loading wood in an orderly pile on the grate. Kimblee takes the tinder and flint from her uncooperative hands and sparks a tiny flame. They fan it gently until it takes and then remain, side by side, hands outstretched to snatch each tendril of heat.

The relief is robbed immediately by the trickle of thaw that works its way beneath her collar and down her spine.

“We can’t stay in these clothes,” Kimblee says quietly, and she hates him for being right. Every layer is soaked through and stuck in some places to her skin. Beyond the rapid draining of heat, she needs to evaluate any damage caused by the fall into the river—shock and numbness could be hiding broken ribs or a sprained ankle.

But _still_. Undressing with Kimblee in the same room, completely exposed to that leer. He’ll enjoy the show with commentary,  no doubt soon to be wanting exactly what he’d wanted six years ago. What _she_ had wanted as well, if she were even slightly willing to be honest with herself.

He rises, choosing to start with gently breaking his overcoat away from the white suit beneath. Riza stays, reluctant to admit the heat has only reached her palms and face.

“By all means, Miss Sniper, die for your modesty.”

“Shut up.”

“Do you speak that way to _every_ commander?”

“You’re not my commander,” she spits. Somewhere behind, Kimblee is rifling through things—she turns to watch, taking in the rest of the cabin. Sturdy chairs, a small table, a set of rough stairs hewn from a single log which disappears into a small loft. A series of shelves and cupboards sits on either side of the fireplace and continues along the left wall. On the right side is a narrow door—oddly modern for the split-log construction, and Kimblee opens it, sharing her curiosity.

“At least we’ll be spared the hunt for an outhouse,” he says approvingly. “Although I doubt running water is included in the amenities.”

“It’s a pump,” Riza replies, cursing her inability to stop explaining. “A well dug under the floor deep enough to keep from freezing.”

“You continue to intrigue, my dear.”

He’s only down to vest and tie and trousers, half-focused on his buttons and half on his continued snooping. Riza just glares.

“You know, contempt is such a poor look for a pretty girl.”

A lump of fabric hits her arm and falls to the floor.

“Here. _If_ you die, I’ll have to drag your corpse outside to escape the stench. I’d rather not.”

He’s found a cache of blankets, selecting out one for himself and one for her. Cautiously, Riza glances again, but Kimblee is facing the wall, struggling with the knot of his tie.

No escape. She forces herself to move more quickly than him: stripping out of her jacket, shirt, and belt to warm her fingers, then fumbling at the iced-over ties of her boots. Kimblee is whistling—perhaps to prove his disaffection with the entire endeavor.

Her socks peel off of alarmingly white feet, and she yanks the edges of the blanket tight across her shoulders before scooting a bit closer to the fire. Patiently waiting for the painful stabbing of undamaged nerves, she works the trousers loose from her skin with more effort than should really be necessary—the wool rips away from the back of her thigh suddenly, and the inside of the fabric is stained a dark red.

“ _Shit_ ,” she mutters, running her fingers delicately across broken flesh. It feels at least as long as her middle finger and deep.

“Something the matter?”

“None of your business.”

She glances to see him shrug and then snaps her gaze back when she realizes he’s finished stripping down and hasn’t yet bothered to cover up. He crosses the floor and drapes his clothes on the rope hung from the exposed rafters, while Riza deliberately turns away, rummaging through her jacket pockets for the first aid tin. She finds it, just as Kimblee begins to snatch up her discards, whistling again.

“That _modesty_ ,” he says with a scolding click of his tongue. “Really, Miss Sniper, what sort of scoundrel do you take me for?”

“Stop calling me that,” she snaps. “It’s Hawkeye, or Lieutenant, or nothing.”

“What about _Riza_?”

She can say no, but it will have little effect on his behavior. He’s incorrigible and delighted to irritate, and Riza hurriedly shimmies out of her underclothes, furious to give him the satisfaction. She expects him to do something lewd, but he simply pins them up alongside the rest of her clothes. He even takes her boots and sets them next to his shoes, slightly to the left of the fireplace. The revolver and holster he smiles at but leaves on the floor.

“Now what are the odds on there being food in here somewhere?”

“Decent,” Riza says grudgingly, contorting around her own torso to see the damage. Just barely, the edges of the cut take shape. Exact center of the back of her leg in a rough diagonal towards her inner thigh, slowly oozing blood onto the cold wood floor. “Trapping season’s not even half over. The wood stacked outside—they were laying in provisions for the next trip out.”

He goes searching again, clattering through the shelves. Riza turns focus to the tin, sorting through what supplies survived the river. The adhesive tape will be worthless, but the bottle of disinfectant is fine and the gauze will dry quickly. The needle and stitching thread are still sealed tight in their sterilized pouch, which is something of a relief. She can pinch the edges of the wound closed with her fingers, but there’s no amount of bending and twisting that will let her see where to start the needle.

A mirror would suffice, but a second sweeping glance of the cabin’s visible interior shows nothing but Kimblee’s bare backside. She wants to rise and look behind the water closet’s closed door, but merely shifting her stance opens the wound wider and leaves her momentarily dizzy with pain. Her feet are burning but still numb enough to make standing dangerous. She sighs and realizes, belatedly, how the blanket has failed to stretch with her spread limbs. Pulling it back to cover the most important bits, she turns her head just enough to speak.

“Do you see any medical supplies? Or anything that could work as a bandage?”

“Are you wounded?”

“I’m fine,” she retorts.

“Hmmm,” he says. The rummaging noise shifts slightly and then stops, and suddenly he is sitting down beside her with a hammered tin plate and enough food to share.

If he found a knife in his scavenging, he was wise to hide it from her—Kimblee cracks the rind of the cheese with his spindly fingers, offering her the first bite and then taking his own from the opposite end. A bit of salted pork each, and they trade drinks from a heavy water skein.

“You never answered me,” he says suddenly. He’s finally wearing his own blanket, as a robe pulled loosely over his legs. Its length thankfully covers everything below his hips, and she notes absently that they’ve both elected to let their hair down, to speed the drying. “How you know so much about trapping and the like.”

“My father was a hunter.”

“That’s a lie.”

His eyes glitter in the firelight, a cool challenge to her surprise.

“Your father was a pamphleteer,” he says, failing to wipe the mouth of the skein before handing it over. “Though not a very good one, so I suppose I can’t blame you for lying about it.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because I read him.”

He laughs at her look.

“I was a child during the labor uprising,” he says. “Not in East City, of course, but you’d hear about it on the radio or read it in the newspapers. When I got to university, I realized wasn’t satisfied with the _veracity_ of accounts presented in official texts, so I sought out alternative sources. Your father was one of the leaders of the Red Scarves—although I suspect more in print than in practicality.”

“He was a lecturer at the university,” Riza concedes. “Philosophy, politics. He gave a few speeches. Then he ran a printing press for the movement—but all the Red Scarf literature was censored and burned.”

“Not _all_ of it.”

Also true—at least ten years ago, anyway. Her father had kept his originals in a red leather folio she was once whipped for touching.

“I knew someone,” Kimblee continues, “who knew someone who happened to have curated an extensive library of anarchist literature. He thought he had a convert on his hands, so he was happy to share.”

“They weren’t anarchists,” she says, a little too sharp. “They wanted to help better conditions for the common people.”

“Survival of the state being contingent on the prosperity of its workers.”

His teeth flash in the firelight.

“Fascinating stuff. Easy to see how it could fuel a few little riots. Your father made quite an admirable case for his seditious views, even if his prose was a bit stilted and pedestrian.”

She lacks the strength to tear the loaf of dark bread, so he takes it from her and neatly splits it in halves.

“So you weren’t?”

“Weren’t what?”

“A convert.”

“Does it surprise you?”

He doesn’t wait for her answer—addressing the fire, deep in his own ego.

“A man who kills a dozen officers in one blow certainly seems ripe for taking up arms in revolution, but alas… that wasn’t my motivation.”

She won’t supply the cued question.

“It was curiosity,” he finishes. “And ability. I _could_ do it, so I did.”

“A fantastically self-centered way of moving through the world,” she says, as venomous as she can muster.

“Selfishness is survival—isn’t that what your father’s friends encouraged? Each worker to think selfishly, rather than for the state.”

“It’s not selfish to demand what’s owed.”

“Owed?” he scoffs. “How entitled, my dear. Amestris is a meritocracy. Whatever they wanted, they should have earned.”

Parroting the party line. Impossible to tell how much he buys into it—his face composed of perfect neutrality, glancing up at her from time to time rather than hold a stare.

“It’s unreasonable to tell them to earn what’s kept deliberately out of reach. They demanded what they deserved, what they _had_ already earned and been denied.”

“What right had they to demand anything?”

“The right of all free men.”

“Yes, I believe that was the title of one of your father’s pamphlets.”

“My father was a worthless old coward and a fraud. If he really cared about his cause, he would’ve died in the street, standing with the rest. Not run away.”

Kimblee’s expression is nakedly amused, brow quirked and narrow mouth spreading to a grin. This conversation has inched dangerously close to comraderie. Riza snatches the skein and wipes the mouth, for emphasis, before draining it dry. She shivers and then winces.

“What’s wrong with your leg?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s bleeding.”

She has left a red scrape across the ground in an aborted attempt to keep their distance.

“It’s fine,” she snaps again. “I’ll can wrap it up until we reach the nearest town.”

“That’s hardly in keeping with combat protocol.”

“We’re not in combat.”

His tongue clicks in a scold, and she wants to rip it out at the root.

“You’re supposed to be my bodyguard, Riza.”

He’s constitutionally incapable of a smile that doesn’t scream with innuendo.

“You can’t protect me if you’re not at full strength. You have a stitch kit, don’t you?”

He’s right, _again_ , and it’s infuriating, but she can’t afford to let infection set in—and there’s no telling how far they’ll have to walk to find a road. A bandage won’t be enough. A sigh and a frown split her face equally for a grimace.

“I… can’t reach it.”

He laughs and then abruptly rises, clearing away the dregs of their meal. Wind whistles sharply around the cabin, and she can feel the wetness of blood soaking through her blanket.

“I’ll stitch it for you,” he says. “ _My_ father was a tailor.”

“Liar.”

“Hardly. He was the source of my fine taste in fashion, just as your father was the source of your misguided affinity for revolutionaries.”

“Fine,” she says grudgingly, deliberate in ignoring the slight. “Still need something to wrap it. Water ruined everything else.”

“I found some suitable supplies here. Lie down on the bed.”

She tests both ankles with a slow flex, while Kimblee produces a roll of bandaging and picks through the pieces she left by the fire. He stares at her expectantly until she finally caves.

“My feet are numb. Can you _please_ ,” she says, grinding her teeth around the word, “help me up?”

“ _Gladly_ , my dear.”

He’s tied his blanket haphazardly around his hips—leaving his chest completely bare. With only the firelight to illuminate, his skin seems pale enough to glow. Prison was not _unkind_ to his physique: he is lean as she remembers, but wiry with muscle.

He hoists her up by her arm, smiling at how she clutches the edges of her own blanket closed from the inside. His hand radiates warmth, even through the thick wool. The bed is shoved against the wall directly opposite of the fireplace—it’s narrow and piled with its own stack of blankets and one wide pillow. Kimblee delivers her gently enough, and she lowers herself face-down beneath a wave of faintness which crawls up from her toes.

“It’s the right,” she says, glowering, suddenly over-conscious of the coming exposure.

“The bloodstain gives it away, I’m afraid. Move.”

He presses against her left knee and swiftly yanks the blanket up.

“Why?” she snaps, twisting her head back over her shoulder as far as she can. Kimblee hovers over her, one hand gently holding her thigh.

“The cut,” he says, tracing his finger from end to end of it, angling far too close to the apex of both thighs. Her blanket now ends just below the curve of her backside—with her legs spread even slightly, he’ll be able to see _everything_. “I’m not leaving a job half-stitched.”

“I hate you,” she mutters, clenching her hands into fists beneath the pillow. But, obediently, she moves, and he impatiently hastens the widening of her stance by kneeling between her legs. She reaches back to pull down the edge of the blanket, trying to preserve some level of dignity, but he swats her hand away.

“Stop fidgeting. I promise I’ll work quickly.”

The cold air against her exposed sex sends a spike of chill up her spine. She hates him so deeply, and yet the brush of his hands against her skin tingles. He starts by cleaning the wound—using his own pocket square and a second skein of water, he works in gentle circles to remove dried blood and dirt. He’s a little generous with the area in need of cleansing—more than once his fingers swipe at the crease between thigh and backside, between inner thigh and the not-so-hidden blush of curls. She catches his waiting grin and quickly snaps her head forward, shoving her face into the pillow.

He pats the entire area dry, just as gently, and then pours the bottle of disinfectant directly into the wound. She rears up with a shout of pain, fire spreading through her leg and up past her hip.

“ _Bastard_ ,” she hisses, clenching her hands in rhythm to the fading throb. He laughs again, and she can feel the warm puff of his breath far too close to her skin. He places one hand directly on her backside—and she definitely doesn’t imagine the slight caress he gives her.

“Hold _still_ , Riza,” he admonishes.

The needle bites in immediately, and the drag of thread through her flesh is nauseating. She tries to stay quiet, but more than one whimper escapes her throat. To his credit, Kimblee does work fast, tying each stitch with a small tug and snip of the kit’s scissors. He starts on the outside and works downward in a steady rhythm.

“I need more light.”

She’s too dizzy to fight as he spreads her legs again, coaxing her to bend her left knee up towards the edge of the bed. He’s certain to have an eyeful now, but she comforts herself that she can always kill him in his sleep. She counts thirty stitches before he’s done.

Another cleaning swipe across the wound, and then he’s unwinding the length of bandage around her thigh. This he takes his time on: keeping his hands in constant contact with her skin, sliding around and around. It could almost be a massage, if the wound didn’t sting with every pass. She still hates, she’s still angry, but she’s mostly boneless when Kimblee lifts her leg back in place and pulls the blanket down to her feet.

“All better,” he says, as she gingerly rolls over and summons a renewed glare. His clean-up consists of nothing more than tossing supplies onto a nearby crate, and then he kneels to stack several more logs in the fireplace.

“You’ll smother it,” Riza says, and he glances back with an eye-roll.

“Are you volunteering to build it back up in the middle of the night?”

 _No_ , but she doesn’t say it. He just smirks, victorious again, and finishes. In one too-swift motion, Kimblee whips the blanket from around his hips and crosses back to the bedside, completely on display for her shocked stare.

He’s not— _probably_ , she reasons, _more than likely_ —the biggest she’s ever seen, but the considerable thickness swinging between his legs is impressive. Commanding, even, in context of his narrow frame.

She remembers vividly the feel of him all those years ago, though she had assumed at the time some fold of fabric teased her with illusion. But clear sight cannot be mistaken. Her head is buzzing, and the sharp lines of his narrow hips lead her stare inevitably downwards—the _only reason_ her eyes remain riveted to his length and heat creeps slowly through her middle.

She’s caught immediately. He laughs, rooted directly in front of her face and bending to arrange the assortment of flannels and furs on top of her.

“Cold can be so _unkind_ to the male anatomy,” he says.

 _Bigger_ seems—she shivers out of the thought.

“Move over,” he says, breaking her out of her stare.

“Fuck you,” she replies, a little too slow and breathy.

“Only if you ask nicely.”

She stays firm, and he sighs.

“Of course,” he says. “We wouldn’t want you to feel _trapped_ between me and the wall.”

He peels the blanket back just enough to slide beneath, pausing briefly so that she feels the full weight of his body on top of hers, and then shifts to the opposite side of the narrow mattress. Riza turns immediately on her side, facing the fireplace, half-wishing she had the strength to slap him.

Even his adjustments are sinuous—the pillow is not yanked or jarred, the blankets are not tugged from her arms. He moves behind her with an ease and familiarity that is deeply unsettling. The proximity of their bodies eats at her, but scooting any farther away will tip her onto the floor.

“Are you smelling my hair?”

“I’m _breathing_. Your hair is in the way.”

An apology grumbles between her pressed lips, and she shifts to pull her hair back, but his finger traces a long, slow, fiery line from the base of her skull down her spine, neatly tucking her hair against the blanket covering her back.

“Much better,” he murmurs, and for an instant she can feel the heat of his exhale against her neck.

She keeps still, waiting for the desire to shift and twist to dissipate, and only half-listening for the rhythm of his breathing to prevent herself from matching it. She’s always been restless in sleep—scolded by Rebecca every time they’d bunked together on weekend trips for the way she tossed and turned all night.

Kimblee is still as a corpse. Breathing unchanged—so probably not yet asleep. She tugs at the edges of the blanket slightly, checking by the itch of wool that she remains covered, shoulders to knees, and then wincing at the tiny pull on her stitches. With everything he’s seen of her already, it seems a little silly to be concerned—but some trained-in shame lingers in the back of her mind, lacing anxiety through her blood.

The last man she shared a bed with was weeks ago, back in Central. He’d been generic in looks, as unremarkable as the man who’d come before him, brown-haired and brown-eyed and somewhere around thirty. Not an officer— _never_ an officer—but a little funny and a little kind. Bits of his apartment surface from the well of memory: the front hall, the flat caps lining a shelf just inside the door. His kitchen had smelled of cocoa and whiskey, and he’d been disappointed that she wouldn’t stay. She never did—never spent more than one night with the same man, never kept the lights on, never allowed them to remove her shirt. She’d imply, vaguely, of scars, and they were all always gentlemanly enough not to question.

Who must have been the last person to share Kimblee’s bed? She tries to snap the thread of thought before it unspools—not enough time between exoneration and assignment, so it must have been before prison. Ishval, where strangers swapped bunks as often as they changed their socks. There were other women on the field, however few, and it’s too easy to imagine one of them as his last: thin, young, masking fright with heavy-handed seduction.

The delicious shame of it, the heaviness weighing down her legs and feet, as she slinks away from Kimblee’s tent at dawn. And him inside asleep, oblivious of anything but his own satiation. How thrilling to lie with him, to feel the weight of that power upon her body, the swell of arrogant pride that for even a moment a man like _that_ could be undone by her hands, her hips, her tongue...

When sleep finally comes, her dreams are a warm tangle of lips and limbs. Her exhausted mind conjures a series of fleeting caresses, the hard heft of a man’s length between her aching thighs, the shuddering build of release that doesn’t quite reach its break before she wakes.

It takes time to return to herself. Her body thrums with unfulfilled desire, tingling still with the ghost of pressure and slow, sensual touch. She rolls her hips, wishing for enough friction to finish.

A sudden groan against her ear—spindly thin fingers are digging into the soft flesh of her sides.

“This is approaching cruelty, my dear.”

She is pressed tight against Kimblee, and his erection throbs urgently between her thighs. Her protective blanket is gone—she is exposed, skin-to-skin, gripped by his arms. In a flash she shoves away, scrambling to the edge of the bed and nearly falling over.

Cold slices beneath the blankets as she struggles and twists around, but Kimblee remains leaned up against the wall, merely stretching his arms forward a moment—a whisper away from her bare breasts—and then pulling them back.

“Before you accuse me of anything, you might want to ask whose name you were moaning in your sleep.”

Her traitorous memory flashes on a fan of black hair, cold blue eyes, narrow hips wedged between her knees.

“Bullshit,” she says, unable to convince herself. “What did you do?”

He grins across the pillow, his thumb pushing so lightly against the point of her chin.

“Absolutely _nothing_.”

He has no right to such a lingering touch, trailing down her neck and the hollow between her clavicles, ending at the very top of her sternum. His thumb strokes a slow pattern and in the next moment is gone, leaving only a ghostly prickle of heat.

“You pulled the blanket off me.”

“You pulled it off yourself.”

Her heart is hammering too hard to tell if it’s arousal or fear, but she looks down to see her arms twisted around the bunched blanket. He plucks it from her, unwinding the mess enough to cover them both with its edges.

“No need for apologies,” he says, his grin widening enough to swallow up her shame. “The show was quite worth the price.”

Flashes of her dream return, anchored by the sharp lingering sensation of his body against hers. The raw smell of him, his hair and his skin and the feather-light ghosting of his fingers between her thighs.

“Honestly, if I knew your feelings for me ran so deep, I would have been quicker to indulge you in Ishval.”

He’s inched closer than she realized—close enough she can see the glitter of firelight in both eyes. Her tongue feels thick in her mouth, and she is nineteen again, pretending at a casual glance for somewhere to sit and caught instantly, _intensely_ , by his quiet gaze.

“That wasn’t—”

“Oh, my dear, let’s not lie to each other.”

The mess tent was too small a space to disguise her intention—no smaller than this cabin, than the empty stretch of mattress between their bodies, which narrows and narrows. The blankets shift slightly over him.

“I didn’t know what you were then.”

Not exactly the truth, and she has to glance away. He must have felt the tightness in her chest, the churning beneath her ribs. Like the slight pressure of her fingers set on his thigh.

“An attraction ruined by exposure.”

She swallows. Sure now of movement, of his hand beneath the blanket and so very close to her body, as it saws back and forth. A vision of it sears behind her eyes, created whole-cloth from the few nervous touches she’d taken, of his fingers locked around such thickness and stroking lazily.

“Yes.”

“Such a shame.”

Her throat is so dry—she wonders how his mouth tastes as his lips part, as the pitch of his breathing shifts.

“You don’t have to like someone to fuck them, you know.”

But _would_ she? At nineteen she’d felt neutrality—and had they remained uninterrupted, _certainly_ , she would have unzipped his trousers, taken him in hand, watched the controlled mask fracture under her eager manipulations. Inexperience was a shield, back then, and she knows he would have loved that, would have relished taking the very thing she was so zealously warned to protect.

No such excuse now. She knows who he is, what he is, what he’s doing beneath the blanket while she lies only an inch away, inexplicably thrilled at each inadvertent brush of his knuckles against her stomach.

“You’re despicable.”

He leans forward—the tip of him pulses against her skin and slips downward, a glancing slide across her sex—and he whispers, reared, ready to strike.

“You’re wet.”

She shivers violently. This— _this_ is a choice. No orders, no obligation, no cold coiling at the edges of her vision. Nothing to compel action.

Just curiosity, and ability.

“I’m going back to sleep,” she says, turning onto her side to face away from him and knowing exactly what will come next.

She’s closed her eyes before he completes the quiet, undulating motion: taking the time to adjust, to match the bend of his hips to her backside, one hand snaking around her waist and pulling her close. His erection is hot against her skin, and both of her hands tighten to fists beside the pillow.

“I look forward to your next dream,” he murmurs, and her body thrills at how close his words are, at the breezy flick of his tongue against the hollow just behind her jaw.

He strokes her hip for a moment, playing his fingertips along the bone and then sweeping upwards across her ribs—he palms her breast with a groan. She can feel satisfaction in the feathering of his lips against her neck—he is too attentive to miss the tremble of sensitivity or the hitch in her breathing as the pace of his massage slows.

“Beautiful. And such a shame to keep them bound up day after day.”

A grind of hips, and she bites down a low moan, fingers clutching only at themselves.

“To think—I missed the chance to see them years back. Such _fodder_ they would have provided.”

The friction of his skin against hers is maddening—she cannot escape the knowledge that it is _him_ , that each caress is calculated to break her open, and she is glad to let it happen. He kisses a deliberate line from her shoulder upwards, pausing only to worry her earlobe between his teeth.

“I wanted to fuck you as soon I saw you in Bradley’s office. I thought about fucking you on the train. And I thought a lot about fucking you when I was in prison.”

It’s too much and not nearly enough to approach satisfaction. His hips grind against her and it’s worse than anything else. A whimper escapes her closed mouth, and—almost without thought—she slides a hand down towards the heat.

“Not if you’re asleep,” he says, half-growled, snatching her wrist and pinning it to the mattress. He thrusts shallowly, a tease at fulfillment but nothing further, and she bites down on her lower lip. Eyes squeezed shut still, as though she could hide herself from the truth by refusing to look. Kimblee’s ragged breathing joins hers, and when he releases her hand, she keeps still.

It doesn’t matter. It’s cold and she’s delirious from blood loss and half of this is just confused holdover from a subconscious too long driven by _what if_ —it doesn’t _matter_ if his hand slides between her thighs, if his fingers curl together to push inside and his teeth mark the curve of her neck—she wants and is given, she feels and thinks nothing, and no one _no one_ will interrupt this time, will snap her back to her senses before—

The stop is so abrupt she cries out. His hands and fingers withdraw, his head shifts back on the pillow, and all that remains is the aching lack of friction between her thighs.

“Mustn’t,” Kimblee says, forcing each syllable through a groan, “take things too far.”

Of course he’s—she almost growls, lifting her leg over his, reaching between to wrap her hand around his length. He hisses at the squeeze, and she loves the sound, eyes snapping open, turning her head up enough to see the mirrored hunger in his face, masked by the firelight.

“I hate you,” she says. “If you tell anyone—”

“I’ll _let_ you kill me,” he agrees, thrusting hard against her backside, trapping her into a kiss that strains her neck. This angle isn’t right—he settles one hand between her breasts while the other shoves up from under her side to resume the ineffectual massage, striking a match over and over but never letting the flame catch.

“I need—”

He pulses with heat against her palm—maddening to be touched and unable to reciprocate, to feel the grind of his hips and the pinch of his fingers. He bites the dip of her clavicle, and she digs her nails into the back of his hand between her legs, worried suddenly that he won’t be the gentleman he’s always claimed.

“Solf,” she breathes, stuttered, tangling a hand in his hair. “I need more.”

“What?”

He slows but doesn’t stop, kissing her shoulder, bringing both arms to wrap around her middle.

“This isn’t—it’s not enough for me. I need—”

She bites her lip. He’s going to make her say it, no matter what, and all the evidence she needs is trapped in the breeze of his grin burning against the back of her neck.

“What do you need?” he purrs, the vise of his arms trapping her body as tight against his as either can handle.

“You,” she says, “inside me.”

“Ask me nicely.”

He grips her chin between his fingers and tilts her head up and up—it hurts in a way she hates to love—until she can see the glitter of danger in his eyes.

“Please.”

A shove against her hip, and she’s flat on her back beneath him. The gap between their bodies momentarily lets in enough cold that she shivers.

“ _Please_.”

He takes himself in hand and pauses, and she knows she’s meant to watch.

“Look at me,” he growls, and she obeys without thinking, trapped in his stare as he slowly sinks in. She gasps, seizing his shoulders, on instinct lifting her hips to meet him.

“Oh my god.”

He is thick—enough to sting, enough that she is more acutely aware than ever before how much elasticity her body is truly capable of. She can’t imagine what her face must look like, what he’s drinking in as she cries out a string of curses. Her fingers and nails carve deep red rivulets down each of his arms. An impossible stretch of time until he stops and finally she can breathe again.

“Everything alright, my dear?”

“This—this is—”

He walks his fingers up her rib cage.

“ _Almost_ all.”

“How—?”

Grinning, he presses a kiss to her open lips and then sets a hand beneath her left leg to lift and spread her wide. On instinct, her foot hooks behind his thigh. He’s a little more gentle with her right, running his thumb across the bandage.

“Would be a shame to waste such lovely work,” he murmurs, and then his hips rest squarely against hers, as her lungs convulse for air.

“Slow,” she says, head shoved back against the pillow, as though stretching her spine might ease the intensity of fullness. “Go slow.”

He holds for a moment, leaning down to mark her clavicles and chest with bruising little kisses, grinding his hips downward to make her gasp, mouth slowly working its way up her jaw to the point of her chin and then down to her ear again, to bite and worry and whisper.

“You didn’t ask nicely.”

In a flash of heat that spikes briefly with pain, he pulls out until only the tip remains and then slams in again. He fucks brutally, savagely, no care at all to let her adjust or even catch her breath—and she _loves_ it, screams and begs and claws his back to ribbons.

Kimblee is _inside_ her—this awful, treasonous, infuriating bastard is fucking her and it’s better than the dream, better than any fever-pitch fantasy she always wanted to forget the instant it was over, each time imagining three fingers as his cock pistoning in and out.

 _More_ , she cries, as he bites her lip, and _harder_ when he crushes her into the mattress, when his forehead slants against hers and his hair falls around them like a curtain, and he moves both hands beneath her head to cradle and to keep her from looking away, to keep her hazy vision locked on his feral eyes, her whisper of his name trapped between them in the heat of their coupling.

“Please make me come,” she says. “Like this. I want it to hurt, I want—”

But her wants are immaterial to what her body will respond to. And he _knows_ —the truth contained in the twist of his mouth, in the sweat beading between her breasts that he laps from her skin in greed, in relish, in worship. He will feel it before she does, from her burrowed nails in his back, from the squeeze of her calves around his legs and the curve of her spine arched upwards, the way her skin explodes beneath the press of his fingers. If he’s speaking to her, she can’t hear him through the pounding of blood in her ears. He’s stopped trying to kiss her—has caught her teeth more than once and his mouth tastes copper—but the shape of his breath might be making words, the counter to her curse, as the cudgel of his body beats against hers.

It is not a wave, a crest, a crescendo—between his hands she splits in half, a flash of white behind her eyes and the dull roar of electricity clearing from each ear. His rhythm shatters in convulsions, close enough she wonders if they crossed the line together as he groans and shakes and stops.

His hair is damp beneath her fingers, the tendons of his neck strained, and she massages the base of his skull unthinkingly, welcoming his kiss as complement to the calming pulse of his cock softening inside her.

“Where did _that_ come from?” he asks, laughing quietly against her mouth.

“What? Don’t usually fuck people who enjoy sex?”

“Oh, they _always_ enjoy it.”

He thrusts once for emphasis and then pulls out, rolling over against her left side with a contented groan. Her skin tingles briefly with chill before he reaches to tuck the blankets back down. Slowly, wincing, she closes her legs.

The ache is incredible—each muscle in her thighs twitching their own rhythm, the tingling warmth that lingers deeper than she’s ever felt, the skin scraped near raw that hungers for more. Stretched out on his side, Kimblee looms over her with an arrogant grin, breathing deep as he holds her stare in silence.

His hair is a mess, sticking in places to his forehead, and she threads a finger down his temple to clear the view of his face. His taste is fading from her lips, and she pulls him down, pushing up to meet his kiss, drawing his weight back across her chest.

“So you enjoyed it?” he murmurs, when she gives him an opening to breathe.

“Is that what I said?”

A carnivorous smile. He bites at her clavicle, hands returning to knead her breasts, and she responds with a drag of nails down his shoulders—seeing too late that she’s retraced fresh red welts.

“Sorry,” she murmurs. “I didn’t realize how deep I went.”

“I think we’re even, all _wounds_ compared. Besides—”

He dips down beneath the blanket.

“—you’d know if I didn’t like it.”

She’ll find purple marks on her skin tomorrow, judging by the pressure and pinch of his lips. He resurfaces to bruise her mouth as well, one hand left to the work of his rough massage while the other lifts her head from the pillow, preventing an escape she’s no longer interested in.

“You’ll be too sore tomorrow to walk,” he says, words splintered between gasping breaths and the relentlessness of her wants, “and I’m not going to carry you.”

 _Tomorrow_. She will remember all of this, will have to rise from twisted blankets and dress beside him, march out into the snow and present herself at the nearest checkpoint, knowing all the while the phantom warmth of his limbs coiled around her and the cool metal taste of his tongue in her mouth.

“You think that battering ram scares me?”

She reaches between them, fingers sliding down his stomach to circle again around his cock, slick still but soft. She tugs a few times, enjoying his wince, moving then to a gentle massage of her own.

He groans, and his breath turns rough at the edges of each inhale. She can feel the twitch of tense muscles in his neck—his face is buried against the pillow beside her ear, and she teases his pounding pulse with the flick of her tongue.

His skin is soft in a way she hadn’t expected, pliant and yielding and warm, different from the rest of his body. And the response to each little movement of finger is deeply gratifying, as she couples her efforts with a kiss to coax him flat on the bed. His arms drift up her back, keeping the cold from slipping between them again.

With a wince, she straddles his legs, and Kimblee frowns against her mouth.

“ _Careful_ , my dear,” he says.

“Are you worried about my wound or your stitches?”

He grins, finger tracing her lower lip.

“I’m not fool enough to answer that honestly.”

She squeezes—more than he should like, and he shivers.

“Yes, _that_ ,” he gasps. A bite to his jaw, and then she begins to slide down, as the surprise in his gaze melts to delight.

The blanket drops over his chest, leaving her only darkness and the musky smell of their entanglement, and she hesitates, alternating bites and kisses from his navel across to each hip.

This is… _unfamiliar_ , in more than way one. Vaguely, she can see the outline of his flaccid length settled between his slightly parted legs, and she kneads the skin and muscles around it—a small part of her hoping this effort will be enough to get him hard again, and a larger part knowing it won’t.

The most she’s ever done for other men is a gentle touch, a closed fist pumping once or twice until they’d move her hand aside and sheathe themselves impatiently, as eager as she ever was to reach the main event. No reciprocation necessary, and she’s always been too timid to ask. The ones who wanted more, or asked her to stay, would be left only wanting, so she has no reference now for how long this might take. But the work is worth the wait—she’s indulged, but not sated.

The taste is salt and sour, and the feel of his pulse on her tongue induces a shudder. It seems better to keep her eyes closed, to learn by touch what pleases him and what produces only a twitch of discomfort. His size is more difficult to negotiate like this—she cannot take even half of him between her lips before her jaw begins to ache.

She concentrates on the smooth, sensitive skin of the head, running her tongue sharply across every ridge and dip, and his hands tangle into her hair, slowly pressing down. She chokes and he groans, pushing harder and thrusting up from below. A sharp pinch to his thigh breaks him out of whatever reverie—he pops from her mouth with a cough, and she drags her nails across his chest as she emerges from beneath the blanket.

“Forgive the enthusiasm, my dear,” he says, as she angles and then sinks down on his cock with a hiss somewhere between content and strain—in this position he’s reached a new depth, somehow, and the static tingle of nerves inside her flares and fades in a way she’s never felt before.

He pulls down on her waist, as though to be certain she’s settled as far as possible, and she leans into his chest, gripping his jaw in one hand.

“My pace,” she purrs, rolling her hips gently against him. A shudder works up through his body, like an answer to her own.

It takes a while to find the right rhythm for them both. Too fast, and her spine aches—too slow, and his fingers dig impatient bruises into her hips. The angle as well needs a bit of finesse, as she’s relying on proximity to rebuild the pleasure that had cooled in all the adjusting. Kimblee’s continued teasing helps twist her along the narrowing slope.

Half-leaned to keep the blankets from slipping down her back, Riza has left her breasts open to his greedy attentions: a rough massage with one while the other is assaulted by his lips and tongue.

“Were you bottle-fed or something?” Riza asks, bemused. Kimblee sets his teeth around her nipple and smiles in a way no one would mistake for innocent.

Then he bites, sharply, sparking a moan when she squeezes around him.

“Did you come?” he asks.

“ _How_ ,” she says, threading her fingers through his hair, “do you make sex sound so unsexy?”

He’ll have some clever retort—and the surest way of stopping it is to kiss him into silence. The strain of his size is gone, and all she knows is the heady warmth of fullness, the tingling friction inside. The violence of their first coupling was perfect, but now, slowed, she can really feel him, every molecule of connection, every twitch and tremble of muscle, every curl of his limbs against the growing tension.

It doesn’t matter if it’s wrong, if he is exactly who she knows he is, if this is the mouth of a tunnel which leads her only to hell.

“I rather like this view of you,” he whispers, when given a moment to breathe.

The tip of his tongue drags across her bottom lip, and with a sigh, without ceremony, with only the quiet crackle of fire filling her ears, Riza shivers through orgasm, a soporific that pitches her into a forward slump.

 _Spent_ is vulgar, yet so unfortunately appropriate. The blankets across her back grow heavy in an instant, and she lazily kisses his clavicle. Energy has been sapped entirely from her limbs, at long last—even the impatience upward thrust of his hips can’t dislodge the sleepiness settling through her skin.

“This isn’t as fun when it’s for real,” he mutters, and Riza only slides sideways, wincing at the slow withdrawal of his length. She keeps the blankets tight as she wedges between him and the wall. Her head rests on the pillow beside his, and she rolls over, presenting her backside. He half-growls, chin hooking over her shoulder. “Are you really planning to leave me like this?”

Bloodloss, bruising, hunger, exhaustion—so many reasons, and so very easy to give in.

“Do whatever you want,” she murmurs, reaching back to guide him between her legs, “just don’t wake me.”


End file.
